Bear in mind that Naughty Dog doesn't just give away their IP to the highest bidder. They seem to have final say on everything. I don't think Neil Druckmann is going to stand for The Last of Us being castrated.

Originally written by Gary Whitta (After Earth, Book of Eli), rewritten by Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), then rewritten by Jesse Wigutow (Eragon, but don't let that sway you, he's a top writer in HW right now) and this latest pass was done by Jones with Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond.)

Robert Rodat was working on the script, and it was taking a long time. I think they were getting a little antsy at Legendary, the production company. Actually, what happened was even more complicated, so let me go back a little bit. First, they asked me if I wanted to make it, and I said, "Yes, I love World of Warcraft, and I think it would make a great picture." So I read a screenplay they had that was written by the guys at [Warcraft developer] Blizzard, and it didn't quite work for me. I told them I wanted to make my own original story with Robert, so we pitched it to Legendary and they accepted it, and then we pitched it to Blizzard, and they had reservations, but they accepted it. Then Robert wrote the screenplay, and only once he was done did we realize that Blizzard had veto power, and we didn't know that. And they had never quite approved the original story we pitched them. Those reservations were their way of saying, "We don't approve this story, and we want to go a different way," so after we had spent nine months working on this thing, we basically had to start over. And Robert did start over, but it was taking too long for the people at Blizzard, and their patience ran out. Honestly, I think it was mismanagement on their behalf, not to explain to us that the first story was vetoed long ago. Why did they let us keep working on it? Were they afraid to tell me?

I know, right? When I first heard about it I thought it didn't sound like a good idea. But the story is being written by the guy who writes the games, the project is being heavily overseen by Insomniac, and the clips shown so far look fantastic.

I think the key here is the involvement of Insomniac. It's not some company that bought the rights to turn it into a movie, it's the creators of the games working with the filmmakers to make what will hopefully be the first really good video game movie and the beginning of a trend in Hollywood.

Ubisoft will have control over the 6 movies based off their games. Hopefully they will all turn out just as well as this inevitably will. And hopefully the Far Cry movie is based off 3. I hated 2 with a fiery passion, it droned on and on and on and it took a half hour to drive to each 3 minute mission. Neither of those are things they would put in a movie, but I still hated that game. Vaas was cool, though, enough to get me to buy the sequel to a game I despised.

It's a 17 hour game and at least half of it is story, there is going to be a lot of changes to get it movie length. There is over 90 minutes of cutscenes alone, and a significant portion of playable sections have no enemies, and are just Joel/Ellie walking around talking to each other.

I was disappointed to hear they are just retelling the same story rather than writing a new one in the same universe, because when I finished the The Last of Us I certainly didn't find myself thinking:

Seriously, this would be HBO's answer to the walking dead. It's not exactly "Zombies" and it's got a major human element. Why they are retelling the same story is beyond me, even if they go with a movie they should focus on other survivors in the universe.

I hope they pull a Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and rewrite the script in such a way to make it work as a movie. Unlike seemingly everyone else, I loved the PoP cinematic adaptation, and think that Jordan Mechner did the right thing in retooling the storyline to closely fit the format of an adventurous, swashbuckling film. It's not great cinema, but it was fun, and the spirit of the games was nothing if not fun.

A movie of TLOU should take the same approach, adapting the conventions of postapocalyptic film to fit the overarching storyline. Some aspects of the gameplay -- for example that human marauders are at least as dreadful and dangerous as the infected enemies -- would make for interesting story points but in a movie the audience must be shown this.

Film and games are different mediums; their respective strengths need to be played to.

As a fan of the game, I thought the movie blew. They stripped it of all "supernatural" elements that played a big part in the game, the two leads had no chemistry, the narrative was mostly different, and wasn't nearly as unique. Retooling it to fit the medium isn't a bad idea, but it should stay true to the story unlike PoP.

My main worry is that the emotional aspect comes from you're connection with Ellie and that probably might not work within a movie considering it came mostly from interaction and smaller moments.

Well it's inevitable, some stories just can't be cut up and smushed into a film. Hell, Game of Thrones was given an entire t.v series and it still is quite off compared to the books. Good, but no where near as good.

As someone who has played the game, I'd love to see a film adaptation. People are always so down on these projects but I never see why. What if they hadn't started making comic book movies? We'd have no Avengers or Dark Knight. What if Harry Potter wasn't adapted? What about basically every famous Kubrick film?

Just because this is a video game adaptation doesn't mean it will be bad. The first Marvel films were atrocious. Just give it time.

Personally I really want to see some big budget video game adaptions. Most of my friends aren't gamers and some of the best stories are being told through that medium. I would love to be able to show them the heart of what they are missing through the shorter more accessible venue of film. Not everyone can throw down the cash and time to see amazing stories like The Last of Us or Bioshock I/Infinite, I really want this to take off.

There are loads of big budget game movies in the works. Assassin's Creed (starring Michael Fassbender as Desmond), Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider (not like Cradle of Life and that other piece of shit, hopefully), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Uncharted. Most of them have scripts, but for some that's as far as they will ever get. This news of the Last of Us seems to put it near the top of the list of "movies most likely to happen", but then again the Uncharted movie was fairly far along 5 or so years ago then has since fizzled out.

The only one that is really going to come out pretty much for sure and looks great is Ratchet & Clank. It looks like everything I imagined it would be, and as someone that has owned every installment in the franchise, I'm stoked for it. There's also a Sly Cooper one in the works that has a trailer out, but it's not quite the same style as the games, for some reason.

I really think that, if done well, video games turned movies might take off just like comic movies did. Here's hoping the R&C movie does well, it looks to be a good start to the possible trend.

If they happen, I'm really interested in the Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex ones. I hope they don't fuck them up.

And as I write this expanding wall of text, I remember that Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a thing. Everything has a few hiccups in teh beginning, right?

Yeah, I think it would be a huge mistake for them to do a movie following the games (as awesome as the Reaper storyline would be on film). There's so many other excellent story arcs they could portray instead, without ruining it for people who forged a very different storyline when they played.

The Morning War would be fantastic, but I bet movie producers will lean towards a movie about humankind's discovery of Prothean technology on Mars and the subsequent contact with the rest of the galaxy. I'm not sure non-fans of the games would find a film about Garrus/Morning War/etc as awesome as we would...Hollywood would probably want it to be centered around humans.

I'm not against videogames being made in to movies. I think Assassin's Creed could result in a decent movie.

Something like Assassin's Creed you can take the universe and tell a completely different story using it. I think you could do the same with Uncharted. Take Drake and immerse him in a different story. Using the same form of humour and story telling, it can be interesting.

However, Last of Us is very self contained. The whole game is about the relationship that builds with the characters. The whole game is dependent on character growth. If you were to do a movie with different characters, there isn't much in the universe that separates it from any other zombie movies. If you decide to tell the exact same story in movie form, it will not capture what the game took 10 hours to do in 90 minutes. The whole game is designed to be a giant movie so why work on shortening it?

Its like if they decided they were going to make a Game of Thrones movie based on the TV show. Yeah, they could do it based on the books. But the show? Is there really a point of condensing each season in to 90 minutes?

I agree with everything here. Last of Us could be incredible as like a 10-episode HBO-style miniseries, but the entire point of the game was the characters. I just don't think there's enough time in a movie to build the characters up. I'm really hoping they prove me wrong, though.

Has a video game ever been turned into a movie as quickly as The Last of Us?

Mortal Kombat. The first game game out in 1992, the movie came out in 1995. Assuming The Last of Us: The Movie actually happens, the time frame would be about the same. The Last of Us is already a year old, this gives the production of the movie a 2 year window.

I've been saying this since I saw the movie rumors. He is Joel. He can do the dry humor, the air of deperation and sadness, and he's the precise age to play a convincing Joel. I think this point was driven home when I saw him in the new Red Dawn, where he plays a survivalist marine.

I told my dad, who loves movies and hates video games, that TLoU is the first and only game that I felt he was truly shortchanging himself by not experiencing, because it redefined what was possible from a narrative driven game and was an experience that every person deserves.

On the surface though, without the context of the experience that Naughty Dog crafted, its just another post-apocalyptic zombie story, of the kind that's been done over and over again in film.

Even if it is good, its not going to achieve the same heights as TLoU. That's simply impossible, translating a 16 hour experience that was enhanced by a perfect meld between story and gameplay into a 2 hour non-interactive film. No matter how good it is, its gonna fall short.

Oh this is gonna be great! I mean look at all the great videogame-to-movie translations! There's Resident Ev.... hmmm... well, there's Silent H.... wait... well Need For Speed came out this year and that was... uhh.... Was there ever a good videogame-to-movie translation? Like just one good one? Ever?